With great depth at forward comes great responsibility.
The Power Dodge Estevan Bruins used five different players to score against the Flin Flon Bombers Saturday night at Affinity Place in a 5-3 win. The Bruins (32-19-3-2) were up 5-1 in the third period on goals by Tanner Manz, Hayden Guilderson, Zach Goberis, Jake Fletcher and Michael McChesney but allowed a couple of late goals to the Bombers (22-26-3-5).
Still, Captain Fletcher’s breakaway goal was some welcome insurance on a night when his team needed it.
“Every time someone went down on him his stick came pretty far out,” said Bruins captain Jake Fletcher. “He left that five hole open and he was playing pretty aggressive. I was trying to pull it and slide it through and luckily it worked.”
Fletcher said his team is getting contributions from all the lines, which is indicated by the number of different goal-scorers.
“It’s really huge and everyone’s important,” he said.
Bruins assistant coach Aren Miller was without head coach and general manager Chris Lewgood due to sickness but the team was focused enough to get the win and hold it. But with the presence of an agitator on the Flin Flon team, the Bruins nearly let another one slip away.
“We let one guy get under our skin and it affects everybody and changes the whole course of the game,” Miller said. “We can only control what we can control, whether it’s referees or players on the opposing team and other elements, we’ve got to keep our focus and not let one or two guys get under our skin.
“We tried calming them down but teenagers are teenagers. They wanted to get revenge and they didn’t want to wait.”
The win came only 24 hours after coughing up a third period lead at Weyburn Friday to lose 5-4 in regulation. Kaelan Holt scored twice in that game, while Goberis and Jayden Davis each scored single goals. Bo Didur stopped 27 shots in the loss.
“It’s definitely something we were thinking about going into the third,” said Fletcher. We still gave up two too many goals in the third. But it’s something we’re going to work on… coming down the stretch. That won’t be happening come playoffs. We’re going to focus on d-zone. We have enough goal-scorers on the team. We’ll get the offence.”
“I think it’s a focus and a killer instinct thing too,” said Miller. “When it’s 5-1 and getting a couple more, all of a sudden it’s 5-2, 5-3 on kind of a goofy goal. It’s a mental thing.”
The Bruins are starting to get players back from injury this week, like Fletcher, Jake Tesarowski and Johnny Witzke, who played his first game since Feb. 2 in North Battleford.
The Bruins’ next action is Wednesday in Melville against the Millionaires (23-29-2-2) and their final home game is Friday against Mils. Then, they’ll kick up their feet and rest a few minor injuries in advance of the first round of the playoffs.
“We really rest up hard coming up,” said Fletcher. “We’ve got too many injuries and sicknesses. We’ve really got to rest up and be healthy.”
“I don’t think you benefit anything from pushing guys back, especially in meaningless games,” said Miller. “We know we’re going to finish third and we’re going to play the sixth place team, so if guys are beat up and banged up, it’s an opportunity to rest them up and it gives them actually two weeks off instead of one week.”
Although as it stands right now the Bruins would play Kindersley in the first round, there would be a huge financial difference on the team’s bottom line between playing Kindersley and a much closer team in Weyburn or Notre Dame. Either of these three teams could be natched up against the Bruins in the Bruins’ opening round.
“I know the GM in Chris wants to play Weyburn but I think the coach in Chris, and us, it doesn’t matter who we play,” Miller said. “It’d be nice to play Weyburn because we haven’t played them in the playoffs in awhile. But anybody we play is going to be a good team.
